From patchwork Sun Jan 11 22:29:39 2009
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Subject: 2.6.28-git8: tg3 doesn't work due to firmware not loading (-git7 is
ok)
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
X-Patchwork-Id: 17857
Message-Id: <99827.1231712979@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>
To: David Miller
Cc: dwmw2@infradead.org, alessandro.suardi@gmail.com,
jaswinderlinux@gmail.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
netdev@vger.kernel.org
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:29:39 -0500
On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:49:37 PST, David Miller said:
> From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
> Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:48:22 -0500
>
> > One unanswered question: What do we expect the system to do if they have this
> > patch, TIGON3=y, FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL=n, and configure a netconsole for boot
> > messages? I'm *hoping* the answer is "the netconsole doesn't come up at boot,
> > but can be re-enabled via the /sys/kernel/config/netconsole interface after
> > you've done an 'ifconfig eth0 up' or similar, or do a 'modprobe netconsole'.
> >
> > Those seem like reasonable semantics to me - anybody got a different opinion?
>
> Even better, how about nfsroot? There is no "later", either you
> can mount to root filesystem or you fail.
I don't see any sane way for an nfsroot to work unless you've built the kernel
with TIGON3=y, and FIRMWARE=y. Anything else is just crazy talk. For that
case, I'd suggest we just do this:
Signed-off-by: Valdis Kletnieks
--- linux-2.6.28-mmotm0109/Documentation/filesystems/nfsroot.txt.dist 2008-12-24 18:26:37.000000000 -0500
+++ linux-2.6.28-mmotm0109/Documentation/filesystems/nfsroot.txt 2009-01-11 17:27:31.000000000 -0500
@@ -30,6 +30,9 @@ In the networking options, kernel level
along with the types of autoconfiguration to support. Selecting all of
DHCP, BOOTP and RARP is safe.
+In addition, your network interface driver must be selected as built-in,
+and if the card is a Tigon3 or other card that requires a firmware load
+to become functional, you need to select FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL.